Dead or Alive 4

Dead or Alive Phwoar, amiright, lads?

Source // MobyGames

Everyone has a favourite fighter, and you should all know by now that mine is Tekken. I want to like other fighters, and some have come close, but they've never quite made the Tekken series redundant. There's comfort in the chunky combat it offers, though I have found myself enjoying other fighting games thanks to this 1001 list.

The question is simple: Can Dead or Alive 4 make an impression?

Darwinia

Digital evolution when?

The great thing about games is that if you can imagine it, you can make it. Just look at the past few games we've dabbled in. I imagine myself as a tiny little cleaning robot. Boom! Chibi-Robo! I want to drill my enemies in the face. Bam! Drill Dozer. Ok, how about this. I want an RTS set inside a computer. Like a kind of Tron thing. Can we do that?

Darwinia is a real-time strategy game where you defend goofy looking Darwinians against snakey viruses inside a computer simulation of some sort. It's different, to say the least, and I know absolutely nothing about it.

Drill Dozer

What? Mr Driller is evolving?

If you're known for developing the Pokémon series, you'd probably expect to have your hands rather full, near constantly. When would you ever get the time to be able to branch out into different things?

At some point in the early 2000s, Game Freak found some time to give us Drill Dozer, an action platformer for the Game Boy Advance that follows bandit gangs who like to do their work inside robots equipped with ruddy great big drills.

Hmm.

Chibi-Robo!

Plug into adventure!

Everyone likes robots. I think. Obviously, some robots are nasty pieces of work. We don't like them. But little robots who just want to help out around the house? They're alright, aren't they? Slaving away on tasks we can't be bothered with. Good little robot.

Chibi-Robo!, then. A dinky little robot who just wants to pick up trash. Tiny scraps of paper and crumbs and whatnot - I don't think he's going to be hauling the trash bag out anytime soon. Every little helps, however, so let's roll up our robo-sleeves and get stuck in.

Civilization IV

"Never bring a sword to a gunfight."

Has the 1001 list deemed it essential to play every single Civilization game so far? Oh no, we skipped Civilization III. I wonder where that one went wrong. Anyway, we're back to turning a bunch of early humans into a world superpower in Civilization IV, and truth be told, I've played so many Civ games for this list that I've forgotten what it was that I'm looking for in this genre of gaming.

Did I want things to be easier to grasp? Probably. Improvements in graphics are a bonus, but not an essential one if memory serves. I'm basically going into this game knowing what I'm going to get, but not the form I'm going to get it in.

Will we rise and dominate the globe, or get crushed or out-cultured by our neighbours?

Freedom Forces vs the 3rd Reich

Peaches and Cream indeed.

Superheroes and videogames. Just think of the possibilities. Beat 'em ups. Action adventures. MMOs. It's not hard to come up with something that should work. Getting it to actually work seems to be harder. There aren't a load of absolute must-play superhero video games, so it's a good job if you like superheroes and role-playing games because Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich exists.

I must admit, I had no idea that it did. At no point in the past five years of going through this 1001 list have I actually bothered to find out just what on Earth this game is all about. Now I have. Superheroes and role-playing games, like Neverwinter Nights or something. Superheroes fighting Nazis.

I don't even know where to begin.

God of War

"The Gods of Olympus have abandoned me."

Source // PlayStation

I've never played a God of War game. Not even that God of War. I might have dabbled with a demo here or there, but for whatever reason, at no point during the last fifteen years did I feel the need to see what it was all about.

I knew enough to know that they star Kratos, anger incarnate, on his relentless quest to murder seemingly every God there was in Ancient Greece, and that the games are full of epic spectacles that have you sleigh beings hundreds of times your size. I know that they're quite hack and slashy, and have quick time events dotted throughout.

Beyond that, I'm not really sure. And I own a few of these games across multiple platforms. Time to finally get stuck in.

Call of Duty 2

"We play CoD that we may live in peace." - Aristotle, probably.

Source // MobyGames

When playing Call of Duty, I could see how it was a different experience to Medal of Honor. Knowing where the series would go, it was easy to see little pieces of distinctly CoD-like gameplay here and there. It was the foundation that needed to be put in place before envelopes were pushed, and boy did Call of Duty 2 push those envelopes...

Cranking the action, the pace, the sounds and the warfare up to 11, Call of Duty 2 is the very definition of Call of Duty - before that definition was rewritten, obviously. What I mean to say is that we're about to strap into a tour of the Second World War the likes of which we've not seen before.

Battlefield 2

You will surely get the Karkland.

The Battlefield series stirs up many memories for me, good and bad. Battlefield 3 had a massive impression on my teenage gaming and was my introduction to a series that, if the stars align and Hell freezes over, I'll return to enjoy once more.

I have never been able to experience Battlefield as it was meant to be played, however. Lower player counts on consoles result in similar, but not really comparable experiences. I've never been in a 64 player Battlefield match. I've been in a 256 player MAG match on the PlayStation 3, though, but MAG isn't Battlefield. I do wish MAG would return. What is it with great FPS titles disappearing, or changing for the worse?

Before Battlefield 3, there had to be a Battlefield 2. I knew this going into BF3 of course, but have very little knowledge of the game itself. In fact, all I've really got in my favour is that some of the maps made it into the BF3 DLC. I guess I'll start there.

Battalion Wars

Boys and their toys.

Thanks to this 1001 list, I'm a fan of Advance Wars. It still clings onto the tenth spot on The Topper Than That Top 10 list. I doubt it'll still be there when we come to judge the next batch of fifty must play video games, but the point is that it made quite the lasting impression.

I know nothing of Battalion Wars. I read that it's a spin-off of Advance Wars. Huh. Is it now? I guess we better investigate this one on the double.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Can a vampire lose that much blood?

The Game Boy Advance was quite the machine, I've learned, and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow was a highlight on the handheld. Or, I was told it was. I wasn't exactly a fan. I could see how you could be impressed by it, but the characters put me off, and my skill was poor, to say the least.

So, good news if you completely disagree with me on Aria of Sorrow: The story continues on the Nintendo DS in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow.

Here we go again?

Dr Kawashima's Brain Training

A maths quiz a day keeps the doctor away.

Source // Moby Games

Your mental fitness is as essential as your physical fitness, so sayeth Dr Kawashima, and a whole load of other health professionals besides. Inspired by his work, Nintendo put together a brain training game for the Nintendo DS, known here as Dr Kawashima's Brain Training, a daily dose of maths puzzles to exercise your brain.

It can't just be maths, can it?

Clubhouse Games

42 All-Time Classics

I'm a gamer of all kinds. Video games, obviously, but also board and especially card games. If only there was a game that, for example, brought 42 all-time classic pub and parlour games into one portable, multiplayer package. Something like Clubhouse Games for the Nintendo DS.

Card games, board games, even action games find a home here, in a package that introduces modern gamers to stalwarts of the tabletop. When times are you tough, and you don't know how to distract yourself, why not see what Clubhouse Games has to offer?

World of Warcraft

I take all candles.

The time has come. How do I tackle World of Warcraft, the biggest MMORPG on the planet, a genre I don't really care for and can't see myself playing?

I guess we dive right in? It has a free-to-play offering up to level twenty. Shall I actually give it the time to get to level twenty, instead of dipping my toes in and running away to more familiar waters at the slightest hint of unease? I suppose it is World of Warcraft. Like, the World of Warcraft. I can't just sweep that aside, can I?

Transformers

Robots in Disguise.

I missed the Transformers bubble on account of being born too late. That doesn't make much sense when you go and look up the various iterations of Transformers and learn that there were other bubbles I could have found myself in during my childhood. It's more accurate to say that I avoid Transformers because I've very little interest in colourful chunky robots that turn into cars and cassettes and whatever else they disguise themselves as.

I've not seen the films, I've not watched the cartoons, and I've definitely not played Transformers, the PlayStation 2 action title that is supposedly the one and only Transformers game worth playing - at the time of the 1001 list, at least.

Autobots assemble, or whatever the call is.

Spider-Man 2

"I'll be your superhero today."

I've been out of comics for a few years now. They're gone but not forgotten, however, and I still have a collection of my favourites to read. For the longest time, everyone's neighbourhood friend, Spider-Man, wasn't on my radar. He didn't really interest me. I have a couple of collections of comic arcs for him, and they were alright, but nothing remarkable. I've warmed up to him over time, but not by a considerable amount.

Trying to think about why I wasn't a fan, it might be because of the Spider-Man movies. Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker was offputting, to the point where I haven't seen the films at all, but it can't be his fault that I don't like the character itself.

It's a good thing that it's not Tobey's fault because he gets another chance to sell me on Spidey, lending his voice to Spider-Man 2, the open-world superhero string 'em up, sort of based on the movie, but not wholly.

This game, if I've remembered what I've read correctly, is the superhero video game, the benchmark for all others to follow. High praise for a silly kid in a skintight suit. What's it all about, then?